At the movies ...

I currently have (a pause while I do the math) six novels in work, two of which I began last week, and if you count the rest of my collective body of work gathering pixel dust on my hard drive the number jumps to a Baker’s dozen give or take.

I think about the stories I want to work on and where they are in my head.

My stories all play like a continuous movie, each running simultaneously and at full blown John Williams soundtrack volume, at the same time, all the time, never stopping until I type it out and say, “THE END” some 120,000 words later.

For example, the movies Locked Hearts and The Lunch Box have rolled credits and did the fade to black thing.

Many of my story ideas come from dreams I’ve had. And oh, how I love to dream.

Daydreaming got me in a lot of trouble as a kid because I always had “my head in the clouds,” if you were to listen to my first grade teacher.

Menial tasks such as times-tables or say, mowing the yard on a Saturday, would hold my attention until about 2x3=6 or right about where I had to decide if my mom’s herb garden was a garden, or an unruly thatch of weeds.

I love to write, but I don’t label myself as a writer – too pretentious, or as a journalist – even more pretentious. Neither do I feel comfortable with the title of reporter – as I am one that claims to never let the truth stand in the way of a good story, or even sportswriter, as visions of Grantland Rice conjuring up golden stanzas of flowing prose over a manual Royal typewriter seated in the press box at Yankee Stadium come to mind.

Too daunting.

No, I’m a self-admitted and self-deprecating hack.

I’m a good hack, but still a hack.

As I mentioned, two new movies started playing in my brain over the last week or so. First is a romance type titled, “The Poet,” the story about a young woman who is sought out by her favorite novelist, a reclusive gentleman who vanished from the public eye some 40 years ago, and has sent her a cryptic cry for help with the note, “Help me… I’ve run out of words.”

The other I started last week.

I had a dream where everybody I laid eyes on suddenly wanted to kill me, and I’m running through the city streets… from everybody.

It was the ultimate chase dream. Think “Walking Dead,” but everybody’s still alive.

I’m about a dozen chapters into the book I call “Blink!”

It’s a really neat story as most my dreams turn out to be.

So, two more movies are running non-stop and at full-blown John Williams’ soundtrack volume in my head along with everything else I’m writing.

Even this.

Think of this as any annoying flute playing the same tune over and over, or a Barney song, “I love you, you love me…” singing over and over and over again in your head and it won’t stop.

I’m finished now so I can let it go.

I’m about 30 years too late but I think I’ve found my own signature signoff like Walter Cronkite and Dan Rooney, and what Dan Rather tried so hard to do but failed.

Here’s mine.

Since this little short film of 602 words is now ending, I write…

The End.

Fade to black.

Roll credits.

How’s that?

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